


Three Years, Seven Months, and Twenty One Days

by Whiplash (TinaOnTheAstralPlains)



Category: Altered Carbon (TV)
Genre: Angst, Cyberpunk, F/M, Fluff, Loss of Parent(s), Loss of Trust, Love, Romance, Science Fiction, Slow Burn, Trust Issues
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-02-21
Updated: 2018-02-21
Packaged: 2019-03-22 02:39:28
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 3,851
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/13754523
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/TinaOnTheAstralPlains/pseuds/Whiplash
Summary: Takes place after the events of Altered Carbon Season 1.Ortega reunites with Ryker when picking him up from the resleeving facility. Will she still feel the same way about him? Will he be able to trust her? Will the events involving Kovacs keep them apart? Will someone help me write better summaries?





	Three Years, Seven Months, and Twenty One Days

The dream didn’t make sense, like most dreams, some kind of void. He could feel nothing, see nothing, hear nothing. He existed in a state between consciousness and sleep, a limbo of the mind and body. Nothing made sense, yet everything made sense. Here he could think clearly, as if all of those mental blocks had been lifted. He hadn’t thought clearly in so long, not since he started using Stallion. Without the drug fear overtook him, fear of failure, fear of not being a good detective, of not being a good partner, of not being a good son, or a good boyfriend, if that’s what he was.

Fear was still present, but now he had the power to combat it. Determination filled him to reexamine the case, to see what he hadn’t seen the last hundred times he looked over the files. He would call his mom, invite her over for dinner in the new apartment to meet Kristin’s mom. 

Kristin . . . he should have told her where he was going, should have told her he had a lead, should have asked her to question the perp. He had almost shot the guy. Even though he was likely guilty, it was not his role to dole out justice. It was his role to bring the guilty to justice. Certainly, that guy was covering up illegal religious coding. There was no other explanation for Mary Lou’s new found conversion. He had known her since they were kids. There’s no way she would have voluntarily converted.

“If . . .” Kristin’s last word to him rang through his head.

Kristin . . . she didn’t trust him any more, questioned his every move. That’s why he didn’t tell her, didn’t ask her to come with him to CTAC. A knot formed in the pit of his stomach at the realization. They had just moved in with each other, had just decided to start their life as a couple, finally, after years of being too afraid to get too close, to finally take the leap of admitting they wanted to spend all of their time together, on and off the force. He knew it was a mistake, knew it wasn’t going to change anything. She’d keep trying to get him to quit smoking, and pretend to let him sneak Stallion hits. And, he would continue to not be good enough for her.

 

Waking up from yet another bender he didn’t remember, his head spun like it did every morning as the Stallion left his system. Slowly ebbing, the familiar burn of his skin spreading, taking the place of the reverie from the night before. His chest burned, like the time he got nicked in Mariposa. That’s when he got hooked on Stallion. It took away the burn and all of the other unwanted feelings, like doubt, and inadequacy. His feet throbbed, his knees and his hips creaked as he unfolded, his thighs were slippery. Everything was too slippery. His eyes peeled open as if they had been glued shut.  Blinding lights, shadowy figures moving too fast, his vision was all bright flashes and snapshots. He was being resleeved.

A hand landed on his shoulder attached to a voice he didn’t recognize. “Take it easy Detective. You shouldn’t have any sleeve sickness, but that Envoy put you through hell.”

“Envoy? What Envoy?” he asked.

Attempting to stand, but doubling over from a tightness in his gut he steadied himself before going any further. He tried gathering his scattered thoughts. He had been arrested. Kristin didn’t believe him. Broke his heart. Had his name been cleared? How long was he on ice?

His hand slipped on the shower wall. He was taking too long. There were a lot of people in line, too many to count. He sluiced the water from his long hair. He needed a haircut.

A black mark on his arm caught his eye. “What the?” He rubbed at the image on his forearm. A tattoo of a dragon in a figure eight, eating its own tail. “Classy, motherfucker.”

 

He stalked out of the resleeving facility, right past her. 

Staring straight ahead, she hitched up his duffle bag on her shoulder. The snap of her boot heel on the tile floor echoed off the tile walls. She turned sharply, striding behind him trying to catch up without running.

“Where do you think you’re goin’?”

“To find out who framed me,” he said without looking back at her, or stopping.

“Try asking me,” she said, standing steadfast and tall, still a head shorter than him.

“What do you know?” he spat through clenched teeth, still unable to look at her.

“Everything.” Her chest heaved. So much had happened since they had last seen each other. She barely remembered what had made him so mad at her. Ultimately, she couldn’t forget, not for one moment. The lies woke her up every single morning of the last three years, seven months, and twenty one days. Questioned his beliefs to his face, on more than one occasion. Asking for forgiveness seemed unconscionable. 

She handed Ryker his pack of cigarettes, the lighter tucked into the box just the way he had left it. He pulled out a cigarette with his lips, lighting it with a long draw. 

The flame danced in his eyes. Even though it had only been a few days since Kovacs left, it was still as if she was seeing him for the first time in three years, seven months, and twenty one days. No matter what had happened between her and the Envoy, Kovacs wasn’t Ryker.

As he tucked the pack into his shirt pocket his jaw softened ever so slightly. “Thanks.”

Kristin wiped angrily at her eyes, violently blending the tears into the reddened skin of her cheeks. Finally, she saw him clearly, looking pitiful in the blue uniform from the resleeving facility. She shoved the duffle bag at his chest roughly with her bionic arm.

Ryker stumbled backwards, surprised. “That’s new.”

 

Most of the people being resleeved were getting one complements of the Protectorate. If they were being picked up it was unlikely they were also getting a fresh change of clothes. Guilt niggled at the corners of his mind, the same corners that were distrustful of her. He followed her out to her squad car, their squad car.

“Wanna drive?” she asked, tossing him the keys. 

He had taken off the facility’s shirt, looking at the new scars on his chest. “Same guy give me these and this?” he asked, jutting out his arm in her direction.

She nodded.

His finger trailed across the fresh red mark on his chest before he pulled on his own clothes. He dug out the sunglasses she had stuffed into the inner pocket of the bag. “No, you drive. The lights are making my head spin.”

He tugged on her arm as she reached for the car door. Her chin quivered feeling his hand slide up her arm, still cold and clammy from the resleeving.

“What happened to your arm, Kristin?”

“I was attacked in the elevator at the precinct with a stack ripper. The Ghostwalker. He killed Abboud. Kovacs rushed me to the hospital, got me a new arm on Bancroft’s account . . . all while wearing your face.” 

He slid the keys into her hand. Their eyes met for the first time, full of tears unspilled. Ryker pulled her into his arms, enveloping her small frame. She wailed into his chest. He couldn’t stop his tears from falling now either. He’d been fighting it since the moment he saw her. 

On the long walk down corridor out of the resleeving facility he wanted to believe she had betrayed him, that she wouldn’t be waiting there for him. But, there she was, with a bag of his clothes, and his cigarettes from the nightstand in their apartment, their apartment where they only spent one night before he was arrested and iced.

Hot tears soaked through his t-shirt. Her hands clutched desperately at the thin fabric where her arms were folded between them, poking him in the chest with the thick keyring. Abboud was her dad’s best friend, one of the last things she had left of her father. He tried imagining how hard it was for her to walk into the precinct knowing Abboud wouldn’t be there. Instead, just an old framed picture of two young beat cops would sit on the man’s desk. Both men had religions that didn’t believe in spinning back up. Kristin had lost everything.

“Not me though,” he thought. “Not anymore.”

 

The ride to their apartment seemed longer than any ride he had ever taken with her. He kept dozing off, his head tapping against the glass, angering the pain behind his eyes.

“You hungry?” 

His “nah” was barely perceptible.

“Just coffee then.”

“Please,” he grunted pulling his jacket collar over his face, blocking the searing lights coming through the window.

 

As she paused to unlock the apartment his shadow loomed large on the door, a ball of unanswered questions, some of which he didn’t even know to ask.

He had half expected her mom to be here when they walked in. Guilt flooded over him at the relief when she didn’t greet them. He knew Kristin could have used some of her enchiladas right about now, and he wouldn’t turn them down either.

“How’s your mom?” he asked, his heart sinking as he saw the altar of candles on the kitchen counter. She had framed pictures of her mother, her uncle, and her cousins who were also killed by the Ghostwalker. The picture of Abboud and her father sat beside them.

Kristin steadied herself, a hand on the wall. He saw her shoulders sag right before she collapsed onto the couch clutching the empty duffle bag to her face.

Without hesitation he knelt in front of her, cradling her once again as the sobs wracked her body.

“I’m sorry I wasn’t here for you. We’ll find who did this,” he promised, running his hand over her mass of dark hair.

“I know . . . who . . . did it,” she sniffled as her voice hitched, struggling through the words. “Same guy who got Abboud. The Ghostwalker. Kovacs got him. I guess I should fill you in on, or at least try to.”

He looked around for a tissue. Not finding one he took the duffle bag from her, and handed her a sock out of it. “There were three socks. I only needed two.”

She forced a small laugh, taking the sock from him and dabbing at her eyes. In the past, one of them probably would have made a joke about that sock going on his penis, and later that night the sock probably would have actually ended up there. Taking a good long look at him for the first time, she smiled through the tears wondering if they would ever joke with each other again.

“How about a beer first?” she asked.

He took her face between his hands, and kissed her on the forehead before getting up and grabbing two bottles from the fridge.

She was right behind him, ripping a match from an ancient paper pack to light the candles on the counter. Saying a quick prayer she crossed herself.

“When did you start doing that?” 

The smoke from the match spiraled slowly up from where she laid it on a plate.“Don’t worry, I didn’t go out and get converted. I started lighting candles and praying for you as soon as you went away. For the longest time there was nothing else I could do. After mama was killed I thought this was the best way to remember her, to remember everyone.”

Ryker leaned back against the fridge, wanting to reach out to touch her, but didn’t. She still felt so far away. He was afraid she might disappear at any moment, as if he were watching her on a monitor that would get preemptively turned off right before things got interesting. His skin still itched and burned and itched some more. Part of him wanted to crawl out of his sleeve, to crawl back into the Stallion. He knew it was just the readjustment period and shrugged it off. He wouldn’t trade being here with her for anything. And he wouldn’t do this high. Kristin deserved better.

The back of his mind burned with need wondering about all of the tiny details that had to align in order for him to be here again. Her mother’s body wasn’t even cold yet. The last thing he’d do would be to push her for information she wasn’t ready to share.

Their eyes locked awkwardly after they each took a few swigs.

“I don’t know where to start,” she admitted.

“At the beginning?” he offered.

With a glint in her eye, she asked, “who starts there?” Setting down her beer, she hoisted herself up to sit on the counter facing him.

Spinning the bottle between her palms, she watched the liquid inside splash and bubble absentmindedly. “The rent payment for your sleeve got declined last month. When I went down to the facility to investigate I discovered Laurens Bancroft had paid it off, and put an Envoy in it to solve his own murder.”

Eyes as wide as saucers he asked, “An Envoy solved the murder of Laurens Bancroft? How on earth is my sleeve still intact at all?”

“I followed him everywhere . . . for those first few days at least. Bancroft’s, Prick Up, the strip. I took the Stallion away from him and made sure he didn’t OD in a gutter. He had a whole backpack full of drugs and guns that first night in your sleeve. I can hardly blame him. He’d been on ice for two hundred and fifty years. He wanted to get drunk, stoned, and screw his brains out.

Well, I wasn’t going to let him abuse your sleeve.”

“Thanks, Ortega.”

She nodded, pursing her lips in thought. “To get to the point of the story, Bancroft killed a prostitute and Mary Lou jumped off Head in the Clouds to outrun Kovacs’s crazy sister, who had a massive Oedipal complex for her brother.” She took another swig of her beer, keeping her gaze away from him. 

He made a disgusted noise. “Aw, he didn’t shtup his sister in my body, did he?”

She winced. “No . . . he didn’t shtup his sister.”

“Thanks. Somehow THAT would’ve made me feel dirty.” 

Long moments of silence passed as she let Ryker work on sorting out all of the new facts. She tapped her fingernails on the bottle, and picked at the corner of the label.

Ryker rubbed his hands over his face. “She dead?”

“The sister?”

“Yeah, the sister.”

Kristin nodded. “Yeah, she and clone died when the brothel fell out of the sky into the river.”

Ryker practically shouted. “He double sleeved?” 

“Don’t worry. He made sure I got back the original.”

“I’m sure he was incredibly concerned about that. An Envoy? Really? He’s probably had so many sleeves he doesn’t care what happens to them.”

A level gaze shot his direction. “He cared because I cared. I asked him not to damage you.” Kristin struggled to hold in the tidal wave of emotions still held up behind the dam she worked so hard to built this morning preparing to pick up Ryker.

“Sounds like it was all you, actually.”

“He died once. Stopped his own heart to get out of VR torture from Dmitry the Twin, after he found out that’s who framed you.”

Ryker slammed the bottle down onto the countertop. “Dmitry the motherfucking Twin! That rat-fucking-bastard. What happened to him?”

“Kovacs cut off his head, gave it to me to spin up, clearing your name. That’s how he found out about you and I. Dmitry kept calling him “Ryker.” The scar on your chest? He held a knife to your skin, cutting away until I broke down asking him to stop hurting your sleeve.” 

Her voice quavered recalling the terror felt trying to protect Ryker’s sleeve, and the futility of keeping an Envoy out of harm’s way. 

Pulling the tie from her hair, deft hands regathered it at the nape of her neck, and wrapped the elastic back around her ponytail. Finding composure, she continued. “It took us a few weeks, but eventually we put all the ridiculously unlikely pieces together. We cleared your name, and discovered Bancroft’s murder was a suicide, which I tried telling him all along. He didn’t listen to me either.”

Ryker laughed for the first time.

Kristin noticed. “Kovacs went off world a few days ago after turning in your sleeve.”

She finished her beer and pushed the empty bottle away. He took two more out of the fridge. She relaxed at the familiar sound of the bottle opener being put back in the drawer.

Smiling wanly, she accepted another beer. 

After a burp of satisfaction he wiped his mouth with the back of his hand and settled against the counter across from her. “Sounds like you two made a great team.”

“He wasn’t half the partner you were. Not you, but still kinda you. The similarities were there. It had been over three years since you’d been put on ice. Looking at your face again, hearing your voice . . .” Silence filled in the gaps. “I missed you so much, Elias.”

He took three long swallows, finishing off his second beer. “You slept with him, didn’t you? Did it make you feel better after putting me away because you didn’t trust me? To look at someone who didn’t drown you in guilt?”

Her jaw clenched. Her eyes burned with fury, which quickly dissipated when she found the strength to meet his eyes again. His question was sincere. He thought she’d be better off with someone who wasn’t him. “I did. And, I felt guilty because I knew I wanted to make love to you, not him. But, he was what I had. Him. In your sleeve. In your clothes. He even pretended to be you for a few interrogations as he helped me clear YOUR name! He did absolutely everything he could think of to solve this case with me, always promising to keep your sleeve safe and get it back to me so you’d be released from prison— ”

The bottle shattered against the wall over his shoulder as she screamed, “. . . you ASSHOLE!”

Ryker merely stood there, unflinching, his arms crossed over his chest.

As quick as a lightning strike her demeanor did a 180, her voice barely a whisper now.“I have spent every waking moment of the last three and a half years trying to find out who framed you, Ryker.”

He wanted to hold her, to bury his face in the mess of her hair, and wake up next to her tomorrow morning in their apartment, together, for the first time. He wanted to lay a hand on her back every time she stopped to say a prayer for her Mama, to walk into the precinct with her when he was returned to active duty. He wanted to love her, and think about buying an engagement ring, and get her a cat already. The hole in the pit of his stomach ached wondering how he could ever trust her enough again for any of that to ever come to fruition.

When he finally spoke his voice cracked. “Does it make you feel better? Knowing you should have trusted me the whole time? Knowing I was telling you the truth? That I was on to something when I questioned the perp from CTAC? Kristin, you told me I was crazy. Twice. You didn’t believe a word I said, even when I was accused of murder. When Tanaka took me out in handcuffs you didn’t even argue with him.”

Unbidden tears fell on his cheeks. He tried blinking them away, afraid to move, failing. He looked up instead. Up to where the front door let in all the lights from outside, up to where she had tossed that ugly welcome mat the day they moved in, which to him was yesterday. For her, it was over three years in the past.

She took a deep breath to steady her voice. “I’m sorry.”

“How long was I out, again?” he asked.

“Three years, seven months, and twenty one days,” she answered automatically.

The breath hitched in his chest. She knew it like she knew her name. She loved him. Still. After all this time. She had never given up on him, when surely she had wanted to at some point. 

The thin, frail voice of defeat came from her throat. “I have always been on your side, Elias. I don’t even know how to not be on your side. But, the Stallion scared the shit out of me. You weren’t yourself anymore.”

You were short-tempered. Blank. I was losing you, no matter how tightly I held on. I was afraid the Elias I fell in love with would never return. I hoped you would detox in jail and I’d have you out before they’d put you on ice. I didn’t know what to do, but I wasn’t giving up.”

“I thought you were going to actually kill someone and get arrested for a murder hat I would have known you had committed. What would I have done if you had killed the captain and the arresting officers that day? If I hadn’t gotten you to drop that gun by disarming you the only way I knew how? I couldn’t keep watching you destroy yourself. Destroy us.”

She picked up the empty bottle next to her, running her finger around the lip. 

He put his hands up in front of him. “Please, don’t throw that at me.”

She laughed, gently lobbing it at him. 

He caught it and set it down on the shards of the previous bottle still on the counter. “Three years . . . seven months, and?”

“Twenty one days,” she finished.

He stepped forward. Her legs unfolded, naturally spreading apart to make room for him to slide between them. His arms wrapped around her, pulling them together. “I’m so sorry, Kristin. I’m sorry I put you through that.”

His chest warm against her forehead calmed her. “No, I’m sorry. I made you doubt me. I have never doubted you. Not once, no matter what you thought. I promise you. I’ll do whatever it takes to prove to you if you’ll give me the chance after all this bullshit.”

He shook his head reflecting on the swath of new information. “You have proven yourself a million times over, Kristin. Thank you for fighting for me when no one else did.” 

They stayed that way, holding each other, staunching the flow of tears, reveling in the touch for what seemed like hours.

“Enchiladas?” he asked.

She shook her head no. “Mama just passed a week ago. I’m not ready yet. I’m pretty sure I haven’t eaten any real food in the past month.”

“Pizza then?”

“Only if it counts as real food,” she laughed.

“Pizza? C’mon! Of course it’s real food.”

 

**Author's Note:**

> Inspired by the Netflix show Altered Carbon. I do not own any of the characters contained herein.


End file.
